Kip Hill

The NES Ghostbusters ending is lol worthy

Man tapes 94 smartphones to his body, then is caught by customs agents at the Hong Kong-China border.

The man who once promised Spokane’s business leaders and elected officials he’d build a bustling Blu-ray factory downtown pleaded not guilty Monday to a 16-count federal fraud indictment. Clad in jeans, a sweatshirt and a pair of eyeglasses, Erick Hansen punctuated his replies to U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge John Rodgers with vigorous head nods and promised he’d return to Spokane for hearings in the case, which has been more than a year in the making.

Erick Hansen, who promised an economic revival for Spokane by locating a factory producing high-definition home media downtown, faces a 16-count federal criminal indictment alleging fraud.

Do you think you can beat dysentery? 'The Oregon Trail' is free this week in the Tech Deck.

A laughing, tumbling 2-year-old Jesse Dillon proudly displayed his Batman toys at his grandmother’s house on the West Plains on Friday, three days after doctors say he nearly died after being left for more than five hours in a frigid car on Spokane’s South Hill. “He will not get into the car seat now,” said Dillon’s mother, Ana Dillon, who still has questions about the events that led to her son being found shivering cold in his father’s 1998 Camaro by police hours after being left alone Tuesday. “He is scared of being, really, in the car.”

Gonzaga University won a legal victory this week against the owner of a shuttered downtown bar that had been illegally using the school's trademarks. U.S. District Court Judge Lonny Suko entered a permanent injunction Thursday barring Jamie Pendleton, owner of the Downtown Spokane Daiquiri Factory, from using the school’s trademarks in future promotions for the controversial bar. Suko had previously ruled that Pendleton violated federal trademark law when he used Gonzaga’s bulldog mascot and other university materials in promotions for the bar during the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament last March. Pendleton argued that Gonzaga’s trademarks were not currently registered with the U.S. Patent Office, but Suko found that people might mistakenly believe Gonzaga had given Pendleton its blessing to use its mascot and logo.

A judge has ordered Jamie Pendleton to destroy all promotional materials for his controversial downtown bar bearing any likeness of Gonzaga's trademarks.

Spokane County’s nine recreational marijuana stores all reported sales in December higher than the previous month, pushing the legal market above $1.2 million as it continues to grow and gain traction with lending agencies statewide. The retail growth comes at a time when some planning officials and elected representatives are pushing to stanch the spread of the recreational and medicinal markets through moratoriums and other measures. In the midst of that climate, Steve Burks opened the area’s newest dispensary, Treehouse Club, at 14421 E. Trent Ave., in a renovated house.

Cave exploration, platforming and death have never been so wonderfully blended in free-to-play puzzler 'Spelunky.'

This week at the Tech Deck, we're featuring not one classic free game, but 3. Check out the Marathon trilogy from Bungie.

John Dickson loves a visual aid. His hands sweep around as he ticks off, rapid-fire, the changes he’s seen in his almost two years as chief operating officer for Spokane County. He uses a wooden model of a Boeing jet sitting on his desk at the county courthouse. And his go-to metaphor of kinked pipes illustrates his approach to what he calls “lean government.” Dickson is rarely without a means of illustrating his point.

Another year over, a new one of gaming just began. Six games to look forward to in 2015.

Are you a gamer? Do you like free things? Of course you do! We here at the Tech Deck are just like you - poor gamers looking for a good deal. And you can't beat no price tag. So we'll be on the lookout for...

Spokane firefighter Scott McCann worked in his personal shop for two years to create the BADAxx, designed as the life-saving Swiss Army knife of fire axes. But he declines credit for the tool’s attention-grabbing name.

Penny Moyer and her family have been delivering and serving meals at the Mid-City Concerns Christmas dinner every year for the past half-decade or so, with one exception. The family traveled to Disneyland to celebrate the holidays a few years back. Moyer, supervising the bustling dining room of the downtown Meals on Wheels building off Second Avenue on Thursday, remembers her daughters waking up that Christmas morning saying, “This is not where we’re supposed to be. We’re supposed to be at home doing Mid-City.”

A woman died in a Christmas-morning fire that destroyed a mobile home in West Central Spokane, the Spokane Fire Department said. Firefighters were called to the Sans Souci West park at 3231 W. Boone Ave. around 4 a.m. Thursday. Neighbors said they were alerted to the fire by shouting and a large pop. Many credited a Spokesman-Review newspaper carrier for alerting them to the blaze.